Jim Udall's blog

Well I may be late to the party, but eventually I get around to it.  More than one person has asked me what I think of the new Apple iPhone and as is my pattern, have answered with my usual candour and pragmatism.  It seemed however I was repeating myself a lot, so felt compelled to put to print what my thoughts on this matter are.  I may flatter myself but I like to think people are curious about my opinion on this product because of my expertise in mobile technologies and in particular mobile rich media.  Or maybe they're just trying to make conversation to the guy seated next to them on the bus :).

Well this idea had struck me some time ago, and an e-mail thread with my colleague - Richard Smith - prodded me to do something about it.   The problem is that it's a real shame I even had to do it.  You see it all came down to price plans for wireless networks.

In particular, Richard sent me a note where he parenthetically bemoaned the price of data on the Fido network.  Specifically, in one instance he had consumed about 500K bytes of data - for which he was charged the whopping sum of $17.25 (pre or post tax - I'm not sure).  In another instance, he had consumed about 270k bytes of data - for which he was charged $8.01.  Now when you consider he's using an N80 device that has a reasonable 3M pixel camera, his average photo is just south of 1M.  So uploading a single photo at these rates would cost on the neighbourhood of $30 each!

As part of the Mobile MUSE project, I have been involved in creating a platform of multi-media services for mobile devices.  We'll get to what that means in a minute, but I'd like to explain some of the rationale and concepts behind the motivation for the platform.

One of the problems in delivery content to mobile devices is barrier to entry for developers.  These barriers take many forms.  These barriers invariably fall into three different categories:

• Financial - it can be difficult for small cap companies in early development phases to afford the investment required to begin working in the mobile space.
• Technical - At the end of the day, mobile devices differ radically from each other in terms of capabilities and even implementations of standard level technologies.  This situation is in stark contrast to the traditional Internet world where PC's generally support a myriad of standard and de-facto standard implementations.  Usually the biggest headache for Internet developers is accounting for two different browsers: IE and Firefox.  The mobile world should be so lucky.
• Business - Multiple wireless network operators put up various barriers - some technical, some financial - that make it difficult to create generic cross-carrier content.

The platform that's been developed for Mobile MUSE is an attempt to redress these barriers and provide a more hospitable environment for rich-media content development.

Well, after an extended sabatical, I have finally returned.  There really aren't a ton of excuses for my prolonged absence from imparting my words of wisdom.  However, let me offer some tepid explanations.

My original hiatus began because of just shear workload.  As you may recall, I am implementing the platform technology to support the Mobile MUSE projects.  The platform provides various services that are ostensibly valuable for content developers in delivering their applications to mobile users in the cellular environment.  Well, as is the case with most technical projects, the task became bigger than I had hoped for.  I continued to experience problem after problem after problem.  Some were attributable to my own inexperience in some areas.  Some were attributable to changing requirements from the MUSE projects.  Some were attributable to hardware failures.  And some were attributable to arcanery in the mobile networks.  Whatever the reason, I was spending WAY more time on this project than I had planned.  I decided to bail on least pressing of the issues - namely my blog postings.

I just read Richard's recent post "Jaiku Looks cool" where he takes a swipe at wireless pricing plans.  I have much more to say on that topic, but I'm not quite ready to hatch that blog.  Maybe next week.

This week my favourite bug is power - and more specifically wires.  A couple of weeks ago our industry partner Bell Canada provided us with some mobile devices and associated service plans.  Last week, Rogers Wireless who is a major sponsor of the Vancouver International Film Festival, has also contributed some devices and services.  On top of that I have my own personal mobile device (the Nokia N91) as well as a couple other mobile phones (that my son and daughter use).  Throw into the mix my bluetooth headset.  And finally, my son and daughter both have iPods.  The end result of all this is an office literally littered with AC power adapters and chargers.  Never mind just the sheer number of outlets I require.  The fact that most of them have this big block at the AC end, means I can rarely put more than a couple on a single 6 outlet power bar.  The underside of my desk looks like a sea of blackened spaghetti in spite of my best efforts to route wires discreetly there.